Idiazabal cheese’s high level of calcium is noteworthy and makes it a suitable food item for the prevention of osteoporosis.

Perhaps less well known is its role in the prevention of dental decay by preventing the growth of micro-organisms that provoke it. This property is due to its low carbohydrate content that increase the secretion of saliva.

Pure sheep milk, without any pre-treatment (it is raw milk and therefore cannot have been pasturised) is gently heated in stainless steel cubes until it reaches a temperature of 30ºC.

Clean, dry, crushed and salted rennet is added that is usually taken from a dairy male lamb. The milk curdles in about thirty minutes – depending on the acidity of the milk and the time of year – until an elastic gel is formed that is cut with lyre into small pieces the size of a grain of corn.

After being pressed, the cheeses are put in brine – a both of salt and water – and finally they are perfected in the maturing chamber where they are kept at a temperature of 10ºC and in relative humidity of approximately 90%.

The level of acidity increases throughout the process that helps with conservation. This process will last at least two months and the quality is maximised if they are left between four and eight months, the exact duration dependent on individual taste.

Smoking the cheese is practised extensively unlike Urbasa, Entzia and other types that traditionally are not smoked.

In order to facilitate the discharge process, the particles are slowly stirred and the temperature of the cask is raised little by little until it reaches approximately 37ºC. This method is used as it is believed greatest possible quantity of whey is extracted in this way and only the nutritional substances of the milk are conserved - fats and protein. In fact, that’s why cheese was invented.

When the cheese maker judges the particles have sufficiently hardened, the warming process is interrupted and the particles are allowed to fall to the bottom of the cask, covered by the whey.

When the cheeses are put into the moulds they are marked with a unique number for each cheese. In this way, each piece of cheese can be tracked.

The Latxa sheep is a small rustic animal - a dairy sheep that produces a limited quantity of milk

About 100 litres per season, mainly from February to June.

But of a high quality. It is a resistant animal, a good transformer of pastures and excellent nurturer of lambs. But Latxa sheep (and Carranzanas), as well as producing a high quality milk, have high added value in other differentiated aspects.

Production of both the milk and cheese always takes place in the Basque Country or Navarra (except in the Roncal Valley zone).

All developed as it has due to the natural landscape in the zone, especially so in the case of IDIAZABAL – a thoroughly genuine and spontaneous product.

With almost no variation, throughout more than eight thousand years, since Neolithic times, shepherds and sheep have followed the same ancient routes that are determined by the seasons: High pastures in spring, summer and autumn, the valleys in winter, in order to benefit from the natural nourishment that follows this unchangeable cycle.

Idiazabal cheese is cylinder shaped, has a hard, smooth and pale yellow, or dark grey in the case of humid cheeses. Its cut is homogenous, marble textured going on straw-like yellow, with a few small pinprick holes or none at all. Its texture is a little elastic but firm and slightly pimpled.